Pelvic health for men and women is a medical area of increasing importance, at least in part due to an aging population. Examples of common pelvic ailments include incontinence (e.g., fecal and urinary), pelvic tissue prolapse (e.g., female vaginal prolapse), and conditions of the pelvic floor.
Urinary incontinence can further be classified as including different types, such as stress urinary incontinence (SUI), urge urinary incontinence, mixed urinary incontinence, among others. Other pelvic floor disorders include cystocele, rectocele, enterocele, and prolapse such as anal, uterine and vaginal vault prolapse. A cystocele is a hernia of the bladder, usually into the vagina and introitus. Pelvic disorders such as these can result from weakness or damage to normal pelvic support systems.
Urinary incontinence can be characterized by the loss or diminution in the ability to maintain the urethral sphincter closed as the bladder fills with urine. Male or female stress urinary incontinence (SUI) generally occurs when the patient is physically stressed.
In its severest forms, vaginal vault prolapse can result in the distension of the vaginal apex outside of the vagina. An enterocele is a vaginal hernia in which the peritoneal sac containing a portion of the small bowel extends into the rectovaginal space. Vaginal vault prolapse and enterocele represent challenging forms of pelvic disorders for surgeons. These procedures often involve lengthy surgical procedure times.
Fecal incontinence, like urinary incontinence, has proven to be challenging to treat. Patients whose fecal incontinence is caused by external anal sphincter injury is treated surgically, as with a sphincteroplasty. Other patients are considered to have neurogenic or idiopathic fecal incontinence and efforts to treat these patients have been less successful. Various procedures, such as postanal repair, total pelvic floor repair, muscle transposition techniques, dynamic graciloplasty, artificial sphincter procedures, and sacral nerve stimulation. Success has been limited, and the various treatment modalities can result in morbidity.
There is a desire to obtain a minimally invasive yet highly effective repair devices and methods that can be used to treat incontinence (urinary or fecal), and/or organ prolapse and other pelvic conditions.